Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #36: Legends of the Fall (1994)

 

Legends of the Fall is a family drama that takes place across two decades, and is something of a western as the bulk of scenes take place in Montana. Directed by Edward Zwick, it’s based on a novella from Jim Harrison. Colonel William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins), leaves the Army out of disgust at how it’s violated its promises to the American Indians and starts a ranch. Joining him are his Indian friend One Stab (Gordon Tootoosis), farmhand Decker with his Cree wife and daughter, and William’s wife Isabel. Isabel does not care for life in Montana, especially when the weather gets bad, and spends most of the movie living elsewhere, but not before she gives William three sons.

The oldest and most ambitious is Alfred (Aidan Quinn), the youngest Samuel (Henry Thomas), and the middle Tristan (Brad Pitt). Tristan takes a lot after his father’s Indian friend One Stab, becoming the most adventurous of the characters, but also the most temperamental. In 1914 Samuel brings home his fiancée Susannah Fincannon (Julia Ormond), and all seems happy. But over the next ten or so years tragedy starts to hit the family, with Susannah finding herself pursued by each one of the Ludlow brothers at one point or another. I won’t describe all the twists and turns of the drama, but let’s just say the movie ends on a bittersweet note and a couple of the characters get overdramatic at points. It does have a nice musical score by James Horner and the acting is solid.

I chiefly chose this movie for my watchlist because the chronological scope of the story allows it to touch on several moments in American history. It deals with some of the fallout of the Old West era, with William Ludlow employing several Indians and a former criminal on his ranch. They’re not living the way they used to, but they’re not completely defeated, either. That being said, this is a rather minor element of the story, save for One Stab’s impact on Tristan’s upbringing. However, the movie does have plenty of western elements, including a final stand-off at the end.

The Ludlow brothers Left to Right: Alfred (Aidan Quinn), Samuel (Henry Thomas), and Tristian (Brad Pitt)

After the more idyllic opening act, Samuel decides to join the Great War over his father’s objections. Not wanting their brother to go alone, his two brothers come along. They join the 10^th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Actually, many Americans, thanks to a growing Anglo-American spirit, went to Canada to fight before their country finally declared war in 1917. The battle depicted is 2^nd Ypres, fought around the Belgian town of the same name. This battle was notable for the Germans’ first major use of gas as a weapon, but this is not depicted in the movie. Though the date given is wrong (February 1915 instead of April 1915), the portrayal of a trench assault is considered accurate.

Here be spoilers. The war leaves Samuel dead and Tristan shaken both by the death and his own violent response to it. He returns and starts to fall in love with Susannah, but his PTSD overcomes him and he decides to wander the world, effectively abandoning her. With her fiancée dead and the attractive Tristan gone, Susannah marries Alfred, but grows unhappy as Alfred starts to climb the social ladder and get involved with some very unscrupulous men (a mix of politicians and gangsters). William suffers a stroke and the ranch starts to decline, but then Tristan comes back and he and his father decide to smuggle alcohol during prohibition.

Susannah (Julie Ormond) gets all mushy with the long-haired Tristan

Prohibition was one of the greatest backfires of American history. Seeing alcohol as the source of many of society’s ills, the Temperance Movement spent nearly a decade trying to get it banned. Incredibly, this came to pass with the 18^th Amendment in 1920. Instead of curing society, it actually made it more lawless as people turned to crime to get their drinks. After all, people sensed that there was nothing inherently evil about wanting to consume a little alcohol, so it was easier for them to break the law in this case.

Usually Prohibition action takes place in the cities, but less populated areas like Montana were involved as well. Actually, Montana got a head start, with Prohibition starting in the state at the end of 1918. It also was the first to repeal it in 1926, a good 6 to 7 years before the 18^th Amendment in total was overridden. Unfortunately for the Ludlows in the movie, their family bootlegging business raises the ire of the local gangsters and tensions escalate into a small war. In real life the mobs had operatives working in rural states such as Montana thanks to the Canadian border. As a result, Legends of the Fall features a unique showdown western and crime movie archetypes.

The family sticks together. Anthony Hopkins is on the right.

I won’t talk too much more about Legends of the Fall, as it’s most a human drama story with a strong historical backdrop. I didn’t even get into the other romantic subplot with Isabel Two (Karina Lombard). This movie is a good way to see how a single family struggles and evolves as major events unfold. Brad Pitt fan girls will have a good time with this movie if you’re one of those.

Rating: 7/10

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #35: Sergeant York (1941)

 

There’s a rich wealth of movies about World War I, but not many high-profiles ones that are actually American-centric. The majority of US citizens had no desire to get entangled in a large war between imperial European powers. Opinion slowly shifted over the course of the Great War, partly because of effective British propaganda (Anglo-American sentiment was growing strong thanks to shared language) and also because of German U-boat attacks on American shipping (they targeted ships carrying war material). The United States declared war in 1917, but it wasn’t until 1918 that it had an army ready to fight in Europe. The army suffered over 116,000 deaths, which seems light compared to the American Civil War and World War II, but was actually appalling when you consider how little time the Yanks actually spent on the front lines.

America’s reluctance to enter a global conflict and then it’s decision to join later, made the first war ripe material for interventionist propaganda come World War II. Sergeant York, based on the life of Medal of Honor winner Alvin York, plays into this, released in the middle of 1941 when America had not yet been attacked at Pearl Harbor. Thus this is actually a bit of interventionist propaganda, but regardless it’s a pretty good movie.

Actually, Sergeant York is not primarily a war movie thought the titular character’s military performance is the culmination of his character’s growth. Alvin York’s story resonated deeply with Americans because his background was linked to the earlier frontier figures of United States history. He grew up in the Appalachian hills of East Tennessee with little formal education and was an incredible shot with a rifle. Thus Americans had a mountain man, a tough yet humble hero, making his name in what was at the time a shocking revelation of modern war.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #34: Rough Riders (1997)

 

Most of the movies I’ve watched have taken place within the confines of today’s United States. With Rough Riders, America starts to take a more active role on the global stage. Back in the 1890s, a not entirely accurate press whipped up support for Cuban independence from Spain. After the destruction of the military USS Maine  (long proven to have been an accident and not a Spanish plot) off Havana, Cuba, the US declared war and ended up with several overseas possessions. The idea of creating an overseas empire was extremely controversial at the time, with detractors seeing it as an attempt to emulate the aggression of European powers and the defenders believing it would serve America’s economic interests or, as Theodore Roosevelt believed, keep America’s heroic frontier spirit alive.

The Spanish-American War was an extremely lopsided victory for the United States. Naturally, the only part of the war that could warrant a heroic war film were the land battles in Cuba, where Teddy Roosevelt and his volunteer Rough Riders would distinguish themselves at San Juan Hill. Such a film materialized as a TNT miniseries thanks to Roosevelt fans Tom Berenger and John Milius. Berenger was the initiator, having gotten the idea while playing James Longstreet in Gettysburg. He wasn’t going to direct, however, and chose John Milius for the job.

Milius had already filmed Roosevelt in his 1975 epic The Wind and the Lion, where Brian Keith (who plays President James McKinley for a couple scenes in Rough Riders) turned in an incredible performance as the 26^th president (I almost added this movie to my list to get more Roosevelt, but alas this is his solo appearance). Milius, a rare firm conservative in Hollywood, perhaps saw himself in Roosevelt, as both used mental and physical dedication to overcome a sickly childhood.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #33: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007)

 

This is another revision of an earlier review I made. This time, however, my opinion of the movie was greatly changed on my rewatch. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a television movie from HBO, is based on Dee Brown’s famous history of the fall of the American Indians in the latter half of the 19th Century. Brown’s book is too widely focused to make a single movie, so HBO limited itself to the story of the Sioux, from their last great victory at Little Bighorn to the fallout of the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, charting their decline from a proud warrior people on the western plains to dependents on a reservation. Overall it’s a pretty accurate film, but accuracy does not always translate into a great movie.

The movie tries for a balanced account of events, though both of the primary protagonists are Sioux Indians. The first is Charles Eastman (Adam Beach). Eastman is the biggest inaccuracy of the movie. As in real life he has a Sioux father who converted to Christianity and changed his name to Jacob Eastman. For a while Charles, as Ohiyesa, lived with his mother’s people, but they were not part of the group under Sitting Bull, so Eastman’s presence at Little Bighorn is completely fictional. He was put in a mission school before having an American education program. Though the movie doesn't have him go to one of the controversial boarding schools, it still shows how Indian children were made to abandon their cultural heritage, down to adopting western names. The movie gets inaccurate with Eastman again, however, in giving him a close relationship with Henry Dawes which didn't exist, and also making him figure more in the other Sioux's lives earlier in the timeline.

What is true is that he was the first American Indian to master western medicine and became a doctor on the Great Sioux Reservation. At least in the movie his character is torn between two worlds. He can’t help but sympathize with his own people but also has a friendship with Senator Henry Dawes (Aidan Quinn) and a romantic relationship with poet and future wife Elaine Goodale (Anna Paquin, who played Rogue in the X-Men films). By the end of the movie he has grown disgusted with health conditions on the reservation as well as the misguided aspects of the Dawes Act, which forced the Sioux to become farmers and also sell off more of their already shrunken lands. Eastman was not present for most of the events in the movie and certainly did not have as many personal interactions with other major characters, but he is used to show the tensions the Sioux face between preserving some of their culture and adopting the whites’ ways.